Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594 - 1665) - The Athenaeum Nicolas Poussin Add this person to favorites Remove this person from favorites Favorite people This person is associated with: Baroque , Classicism French classical painter. Poussin was born in Les Andelys, a small town on the Seine, about 32 kilometres from Paris. In 1612 at the age of 18 years he made his first contact with contemporary art through the arrival in his home town of a minor artist, Quentin Varin, who had been commissioned to paint three altarpieces for the town church. Poussin later moved to Paris where he was able to study classical art before moving to Rome in 1624 where he encountered antique buildings and Renaissance art. He had previously met the poet Giambattsita Marino who commissioned some drawings from Poussin; this led him into the circle of Cassiano del Pozzo who was to become his most faithful patron during his early years in Rome. Pozzo was a man of wide interests, including the natural sciences as well as art history and his contacts included Galileo and Kepler.

Poussin was able to acquire a wide range of knowledge which was rare, if not unique, among artists at that time and this was reflected in his paintings. For 15 years Poussin was primarily dependent for his commissions on Pozzo and his circle. In 1628 Poussin received a commission for an altarpiece in St Peter's (the Matyrdom of St Erasmus now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana). With only measured success Poussin concentrated on small canvases. Poussin's work however matured over the next years due to the works of art that he saw around him. Ancient sculptures exercised a profound effect on his mind and in the 1620s and 1630s Titian's work was of equal importance to the artist. In 1639 Poussin received an invitation to return to France to work for Louis XIII and he arrived in Paris in 1640. But this was not a success and after two years he returned to Rome where he spent the remainder of his life. He became more of a recluse and had built up a small but faithful clientele of Roman and Parisien friends who provided him with many commissions.

By this time his style had drifted from Titian to Raphael and the antique as objects of his admiration and imitation. He died in 1665 and was revered by all art lovers in Rome and France. Poussin's paintings and principles were to remain a standard for the long line of classical artists that followed right into the 19th and 20th centuries, amongst them, Claude Gelée (Lorrain) and the major neo-classical artists in France, including David and Ingres. During the 1630s, Poussin collaborated with Jean Lemaire who painted several landscapes of his works. Nicolas Poussin painted at least 250 canvases. Bibliography: Jacques Thuillier, Poussin, Paris, Flammarion, 1994. Pierre Rosenberg & Louis-Antoine Prat, Nicolas Poussin 1594– 1665. Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan, Leonardo, 1994. External links: Nicolas Poussin (Getty Museum) Nicolas Poussin Died Rome, Italy So wrote a biographer about Nicolas Poussin, a philosopher who expressed himself in paint.

Pointing to his forehead, Gian Lorenzo Bernini called Poussin "a painter who works up here." Born to Norman peasants, Poussin went to Paris in 1612, working with Mannerist artists and collaborating with Philippe de Champaigne. In Rome by 1624, he worked in Domenichino's studio, absorbing his composition and cool colors. Poussin's art developed slowly. His first major commission, an altarpiece for Saint Peter's Basilica, was unsuccessful; in fact, he never painted again for a public building in Rome but concentrated on small pictures for collectors. In 1640 Louis XIII persuaded him to supervise a large decorative project in Paris, but Poussin soon returned to Rome, suited neither for large projects nor for court intrigue and competition. He usually painted what he chose, on speculation rather than commission, a practice that led to reputation, not riches. Despite weak, shaky hands--which plagued him as early as 1643 and were probably a symptom of syphilis--Poussin painted by himself, lacking the resources required to run a large workshop with assistants and apprentices. His pictures, rather than pupils, shaped European art for generations.

Poussin was the chief formulator of the French classical tradition in painting. By the mid-1630s, he began exploring a serene, classical style inspired by Raphael and antiquity, emphasizing form and moral content. His late works are essays in solid geometry, with movement minimized and every element given a symbolic meaning and pictorial function. Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art Works of Art (11) Essay Born in Les Andelys, Normandy, and active in Paris from 1612 to 1623, Poussin, like many European artists of his generation, was drawn to Rome . He arrived there in 1624 an unformed painter, but would become a central figure for the Roman and European art of his time—despite the fact that he defined himself against the prevailing Baroque tastes of his adopted city and steadfastly followed his own artistic path. Poussin brought a new intellectual rigor to the classical impulse in art, as well as a unique, somewhat reticent poetry.

His sensitivity to the nuances of gesture, design, color, and handling, which he varied according to the theme at hand, permitted him to bring a very focused expression to his art and to create for each narrative a memorable and enduring form. The wide range of his oeuvre includes scenes of subdued tenderness, bacchic revelry, mourning, righteous civic virtue, and other more difficult to identify states of mind or being. In Rome, Poussin was welcomed into the lively group of intellectuals centered around Cassiano dal Pozzo, the remarkable archaeologist, philosopher, and naturalist employed by the Barberini family. Cassiano became Poussin’s close friend and patron, as well as a link to other well-placed collectors. His intense curiosity about the lives and thought of the early Greeks and Romans , and his dedication to recording the monuments of their civilization, would exert a strong influence on the young painter. In 1628, with Cassiano’s help, Poussin received his only papal commission.

The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus, painted for the Church of Saint Peter (now Vatican Museums)—one of his largest and most Baroque compositions—was coolly received, and was followed by the loss of an important commission for the church of San Luigi dei Francesi. At this point it became clear to Poussin that he would not be sought out to decorate the churches and palaces of Counter-Reformation Rome, and that this was not, in fact, where his real strength lay. The large, theatrical saints in ecstasy and scenes of apotheosis so popular at the time clearly struck no responsive chord in Poussin, and with remarkable vision and determination he set off in his own direction. Within the circle of Cassiano and for a small group of discerning patrons in France, he gradually developed an audience for the paintings of relatively modest size—rationally ordered, subdued, often exquisitely poetic works—for which he is now so well known. Poussin’s Subject Matter A man of extraordinary learning and intellectual sophistication in his own right, Poussin played a significant role in the choice of subject for many of his private commissions.

Some are themes of his own invention or subjects that no previous artist chose to depict; frequently his paintings carry a moral or philosophical message, or draw attention to man’s precarious position in the universe. They are inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ancient history, certain stories from the Old Testament, and—late in his career—the seven Sacraments (The Confirmation, from the series of The Seven Sacraments, Collection of the Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle) conceived within the early Christian church. Toward the end of his life, he would create a group of transcendent landscapes with Stoical themes, including four paintings representing the Seasons, now in the Louvre, Paris. All of these subjects he painted with extraordinary empathy and near-identification. Although they might suggest conflicting systems of belief—Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Stoic, Pantheistic—Poussin seems to have taken on each type of narrative as an even-handed, respectful interpreter, representing each as a product of human culture and history and of our essential need to create order out of what might seem chaos. These pictures appear to be about “faith” as a phenomenon as much as they are about a particular faith.

Early Works During his first years in Rome, Poussin sampled many different artistic styles, but he chose his influences carefully. He was clearly impressed by the paintings of the great Venetian colorist Titian (ca. 1488–1576), as well as by the friezes he found on Greco-Roman tombs. The wonderful little Rest on the Flight into Egypt ( 1997.117.6 ) may date as early as 1627 and reveals a clear debt to Titian. The playful horde of putti, the highly keyed reds, blues, and whites of the Virgin’s robe, and the intensely blue sky—as well as the optimistic spirit of the picture as a whole—reveal Poussin’s admiration for Titian’s Bacchanals, then in the Aldobrandini collection in Rome. What Poussin brings to the picture that we would not expect to find in a similar work by Titian is its intimacy (due in part to the small scale) and a very tender poetry.

The first painting by Poussin to be acquired by an American museum, Midas Washing at the Source of the Pactolus (1624; 71.56 ), is one of many works by the artist inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The painterly handling is typical of Poussin’s earlier works and a stark contrast to the cleanly drawn and regimentally ordered pictures from his middle years such as The Abduction of the Sabine Women (ca. 1633–34; 46.160 ). The composition of the Midas is beautifully and subtly laid out; it is deeply satisfying but does not call attention to itself. The same can be said for the picture’s subdued palette and fluid brushwork. In comparison to the dazzling altarpieces of his Baroque contemporaries, this painting is a “soft sell,” and reveals the independence of Poussin’s eye and mind.

The story of Midas, the unfortunate king who asked Bacchus that all he touched be turned to gold, carries with it the aura of the earth at an earlier stage of development so common in Poussin’s mythological scenes, but also suggests—in its questioning of material wealth—the Stoicism that figures prominently in the artist’s later work and that was a true reflection of his character and way of life. Tasso’s epic poem about the Crusades , Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Liberated), completed in 1575, was the source for a group of Poussin’s canvases from the early 1530s. These paintings have the gentle, otherworldly quality of a fairy tale—in spite of the fact that for Poussin, the appeal of the subject seems to have been the conflict between pleasure (or enchantment) and duty (the Crusades).

In The Companions of Rinaldo ( 1977.1.2 ), a picture once owned by Cassiano dal Pozzo, Rinaldo is out of sight in the lair of the sorceress Armida, and his companions, Carlo and Ubaldo, have come to rescue him from temptation and recall him to duty and more manly adventures. They have been ferried to the “Fortunate Isles” in the exotic little boat in the background, modeled after a similar vessel the artist must have known from a Roman sarcophagus. Their movements are exquisitely graceful, yet somehow tentative (they are hardly figures of impulsive determination), and the startling blue and copper of their costumes adds to the richness of their characterization. These fine young men, like so many of Poussin’s figures, seem to be poised for all time just so, frozen in pursuit, and this is part of their poignant charm. Middle Years It was not unusual for the artist to paint several versions of a subject, rethinking the composition and the expressive quality of the picture in the process; this was the case with Poussin’s two paintings of The Abduction of the Sabine Women (ca.

1633), which have been described as scenes of “subdued mayhem.” Both paintings, with their powerfully opposing diagonals, are examples of the vigorous and assertive style that Poussin adopted for many of his scenes from ancient history. In what appears to be the earlier version (ca. 1633–34; 46.160 ), in the Metropolitan Museum, he has dispersed the figures in several friezelike planes parallel to the foreground, and the architecture seems to stop the eye from moving back into the distance. In the version in the Louvre , from about 1637, the artist draws our eye into the distance with diagonals created by the architecture on the right, and he has taken pains to develop groups of figures here and there that introduce random diagonal elements into the center of the composition and bring a breath of fresh air to the tightly structured scene. It was to aid in the creation of such complex and carefully organized narratives that Poussin probably used the small stages with wax figures and painstakingly arranged draperies described by his contemporaries.

Later Works Poussin may well have used such a stage to plan the rigorous composition of Saints Peter and John Healing the Lame Man ( 24.45.2 ), a painting from about 1655 that shows the artist responding to the imposing and solid classicism of Raphael’s The School of Athens, a fresco of 1509 for the Stanza della Segnatura (Vatican, Rome). Raphael’s masterpiece was the source for a compositional type that Poussin returned to again and again, manipulating the conventions of classical art: the draped figures, rhetorical gestures, and architecture. Here these components are pared down to their most minimal, unadorned aspect. In a mute performance, the figures sit, stand, turn from and face us, gesturing expressively as they enact the narrative. With each painterly adjustment or formal decision, however, we sense the remarkable authority and spirit of invention that the artist brings to the sometimes rigid confines of the classical idiom. The intense blues, golds, and oranges employed here were inspired by the highly saturated colors discovered in Roman wall paintings by contemporary archaeologists.

Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun ( 24.45.1 ), from 1658, is among Poussin’s late masterpieces, and intuitive rather than systematic in design. The artist appears to have surrendered control and lapsed momentarily in his love of order and geometry, permitting his imagination to lead him. There is, nevertheless, a sureness to the composition that reveals the master hand and mind at work. Poussin apparently followed Natalis Comes’s sixteenth-century commentary on the story of Orion, which gives a meteorological interpretation of the myth. Beyond the specific roles played by the main characters—the giant Orion, Cedalion on his shoulders, and Diana in the clouds—the image of a blind and clearly vulnerable giant feeling his way across a vast primeval landscape with the aid of several benevolent smaller figures is extraordinarily touching. We know that he will find the rising sun and regain his sight with their help. In the midst of a pagan landscape, there is a sense that, beyond the myth of Orion, we may also be dealing with something approximating a vision of earthly as opposed to heavenly salvation, or the struggle of each individual human being to find his way.

Poussin’s sight was weakening during the years he produced his late landscapes, and they have an almost pointillist technique, which is particularly well suited to their subject matter. Understanding Poussin In a letter to his close friend and patron Paul Fréart de Chantelou, Poussin instructs us in appreciating his art. After hearing of Chantelou’s disappointment when he compared a more sober canvas he had just received from the artist with a more sensuous and pleasing painting Poussin had made for another French collector, the artist patiently explained to him that various subjects made different demands on an artist, and required very different expressive means to properly fulfill them. Just as the Greeks created “Modes” to write music with a different spirit or mood for different contexts, Poussin tells his friend, so he, in a similar manner pursued his art, always seeking the design, handling, and formal means appropriate to a given subject. From such remarks developed the “Theory of the Modes” that has been linked with Poussin’s name since the seventeenth century, and which helps us to understand his artistic process. These remarks also reveal Poussin’s unusual self-awareness and his tendency to be analytical where his work was concerned.

Sometimes associated with an uncompromising, almost ascetic formalism, Poussin’s art is, in fact, a marriage of poetry and reason, sensibility and intellect, a balance of two aspects of one character. Sometimes they sit comfortably together in a finished work. Sometimes, in a particular painting, intellect or sensibility might prevail to a lesser or greater degree, not with unhappy consequences. We may even sense, in his more austere or sober productions, a renunciation: of elegy, tenderness, the world of the senses. One looks to these paintings as much to read the extraordinary character of their creator, as for their beauty and interest as works of art. Poussin’s paintings would have a profound influence on many later artists, in particular such classical and classicizing painters as Jacques Louis David , Paul Cézanne , and Pablo Picasso . Mary Sprinson de Jesús Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art October 2003 Citation Sprinson de Jesús, Mary. “Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.

(October 2003) Further Reading Rosenberg, Pierre, and Keith Christiansen, eds. Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007. See on MetPublications Scott, Katie, and Genevieve Warwick, eds. Commemorating Poussin: Reception and Interpretation of the Artist. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Thompson, James. Nicolas Poussin. MMA Bulletin 50. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. See on MetPublications Verdi, Richard. Nicolas Poussin, 1594–1665. Exhibition catalogue. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1995. Related Poussin, Nicolas Encyclopedia > People > Literature and the Arts > European Art, 1600 to the Present: Biographies Nicolas Poussin Poussin, Nicolas (nēkôläˈ) [ key ], 1594–1665, French painter, b. Les Andelys. Poussin was considered the greatest of living painters by his contemporaries.

Although he spent most of his life in Italy, his painting became the standard for French classical art. Poussin studied painting in the mannerist style in France until 1624, when he traveled to Rome via Venice. His early work in Rome (1624–33) manifests diversified tendencies. He executed many drawings of antique monuments for the great patron of the arts Cassiano del Pozzo. He experimented also with the baroque style of Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco in works such as the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus (1629; Vatican). The paintings of Titian and Veronese influenced his choice of mythological and elegiac subjects. Poussin's growing preoccupation with the works of antiquity and of Raphael resulted in a new clarity of composition in such paintings as the Adoration of the Magi (1633; Dresden) and The Golden Calf (c.1635; National Gall., London). His figures began to exhibit greater linear precision and sculptural solidity. Poussin became especially concerned with the didactic and philosophical possibilities of painting.

He formulated the doctrines that became the basis of French classical and academic art, whereby a work was intended to arouse rational and intellectual, rather than visual, response in the viewer. His approach to and successful justification of this intellectualization profoundly influenced painting far into the 19th cent. In 1640, Poussin was called to Paris by Louis XIII to displace Vouet as first painter to the king. Both the intrigues of Vouet and the task of administering the large-scale decoration of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre were distasteful to Poussin. A cold austerity characterizes his few works that remain from this period, e.g., Truth Rescuing Time (Louvre). By 1643, Poussin had returned to Rome. He then produced works that are considered the purest embodiments of French classicism. A comparison of his early and late versions of Shepherds of Arcadia (c.1629, Chatsworth Coll., England; and c.1650, Louvre) shows the fundamental change in his outlook. The poetic, dynamic emphasis of the early work was abandoned for the contemplative aspects of the subject in the later work.

In his two series of the Seven Sacraments (1640s), he concentrated upon the symbolic meaning of each sacrament, stressing monumental solemnity and dignity. During the late 1640s Poussin turned to landscape painting. In such works as the Death of Phocion (1648) he constructed a classical landscape, ordered with mathematical precision through the use of architecture. A renewed interest in mythology led him to favor esoteric themes, as in the Landscape with Orion (1658; Metropolitan Mus.). In his late work he developed a freer conception of nature, while his figures were considerably reduced in size and importance. Of his last works, the paintings in the series known as the Four Seasons (1660–64; Louvre) are most notable. See his drawings ed. by W. F. Friedlander (4 vol., 1939–63); his paintings ed. by A. Blunt (1966); studies by C. Wright (1985) and Y. Zolotov (1985). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press.

All rights reserved. Nicolas Poussin - The complete works Self-Portrait 1649 Nicolas Poussin (15 June 1594 - 19 November 1665) was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. Until the 20th century he remained the dominant inspiration for such classically oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David and Paul Cezanne. He spent most of his working life in Rome except for a short period when Cardinal Richelieu ordered him back to France as First Painter to the King. Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665 (Book, 1995) [WorldCat.org] Find more libraries Librarian? Claim your library to Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665 London : Zwemmer in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, ©1995. Edition/Format: WorldCat Summary: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was the greatest French painter of the 17th century, and one of the greatest painters of all time.

His profound understanding of the art of antiquity and of the Italian Renaissance led him to create works of such sophistication, clarity and discipline that they remained the model for all classicising artists up to Cezanne and even into our own century. Although Poussin's subject-matter was largely religious and mythological, Richard Verdi shows in his illuminating introductory essay that it derived from themes and preoccupations that were intensely personal in origin. At the same time, Poussin's study of the countryside around Rome laid the foundations for landscape paintings of heroic grandeur and lyrical beauty. This catalogue accompanies the first comprehensive exhibition of Poussin's paintings in Britain, staged to mark the 400th anniversary of the artist's birth. Some ninety paintings have been assembled from public and private collections throughout the world for an exhibition of the highest scholarly importance, as well as one of great popular appeal. The works have been selected by Pierre Rosenberg, Director of the Louvre, who contributes a distinguished essay to this catalogue, and by Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery in London. This lavish and beautifully illustrated volume encompasses much recent research on Poussin, and as such will be of vital interest to art historians.

It also explores and clarifies an art that is fundamental to the Western classical tradition, and presents it in all its splendour. As a study of the artist and the genesis of his major works, it is unlikely to be superseded for some time. Read more... Rating: You are connected to the University of Washington Libraries network Hide local services for this item OCLC FirstSearch Add library to Favorites Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item... Details London : Zwemmer in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, ©1995 (OCoLC)624384149 Nicolas Poussin; Nicolas Poussin; Nicolas Poussin; Nicolas Poussin Document Type: 336 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 31 cm Responsibility: Richard Verdi ; with an essay by Pierre Rosenberg.

Abstract: Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was the greatest French painter of the 17th century, and one of the greatest painters of all time. His profound understanding of the art of antiquity and of the Italian Renaissance led him to create works of such sophistication, clarity and discipline that they remained the model for all classicising artists up to Cezanne and even into our own century. Although Poussin's subject-matter was largely religious and mythological, Richard Verdi shows in his illuminating introductory essay that it derived from themes and preoccupations that were intensely personal in origin. At the same time, Poussin's study of the countryside around Rome laid the foundations for landscape paintings of heroic grandeur and lyrical beauty. This catalogue accompanies the first comprehensive exhibition of Poussin's paintings in Britain, staged to mark the 400th anniversary of the artist's birth. Some ninety paintings have been assembled from public and private collections throughout the world for an exhibition of the highest scholarly importance, as well as one of great popular appeal.

The works have been selected by Pierre Rosenberg, Director of the Louvre, who contributes a distinguished essay to this catalogue, and by Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery in London. This lavish and beautifully illustrated volume encompasses much recent research on Poussin, and as such will be of vital interest to art historians. It also explores and clarifies an art that is fundamental to the Western classical tradition, and presents it in all its splendour. As a study of the artist and the genesis of his major works, it is unlikely to be superseded for some time. Reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Tags Add tags for "Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665". Be the first. Similar Items schema:datePublished "1995" ; schema:description "Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was the greatest French painter of the 17th century, and one of the greatest painters of all time.

His profound understanding of the art of antiquity and of the Italian Renaissance led him to create works of such sophistication, clarity and discipline that they remained the model for all classicising artists up to Cezanne and even into our own century. Although Poussin's subject-matter was largely religious and mythological, Richard Verdi shows in his illuminating introductory essay that it derived from themes and preoccupations that were intensely personal in origin. At the same time, Poussin's study of the countryside around Rome laid the foundations for landscape paintings of heroic grandeur and lyrical beauty. This catalogue accompanies the first comprehensive exhibition of Poussin's paintings in Britain, staged to mark the 400th anniversary of the artist's birth. Some ninety paintings have been assembled from public and private collections throughout the world for an exhibition of the highest scholarly importance, as well as one of great popular appeal. The works have been selected by Pierre Rosenberg, Director of the Louvre, who contributes a distinguished essay to this catalogue, and by Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery in London. This lavish and beautifully illustrated volume encompasses much recent research on Poussin, and as such will be of vital interest to art historians.

It also explores and clarifies an art that is fundamental to the Western classical tradition, and presents it in all its splendour. As a study of the artist and the genesis of his major works, it is unlikely to be superseded for some time."@ en ; Nicolas Poussin | Kimbell Art Museum Kimbell Art Museum Provenance Nicolas Poussin The Kimbell Art Museum has added to its European collection one of the most important acquisitions in its history: French painter Nicolas Poussin's Sacrament of Ordination (Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter). The painting is from Poussin's famous first set of the Seven Sacraments, which has been universally acclaimed, virtually since its creation, as a landmark in the history of art. The series was commissioned by the prominent Roman collector Cassiano dal Pozzo between 1636 and 1642.

In 1785, the 4th Duke of Rutland purchased the paintings and brought them to England, after which Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy of Arts, declared: "I think upon the whole that this must be considered as the greatest work of Poussin, who was certainly one of the greatest Painters that ever lived." Click on the image to learn more. "This is among the most significant old master paintings to have become available in decades," commented Eric M. Lee, the Museum's director. "I'm thrilled about the acquisition. Poussin's harmonious painting, with its frieze of colorfully dressed figures set against a landscape, beautifully complements the serene Louis Kahn-designed galleries of the Kimbell, and vice-versa—a perfect union of painting and architecture. The classical sense of restraint in this work makes for an interesting contrast to the Poussin already in our collection, the earlier, more sensuous, Venetian-inspired Venus and Adonis." Cassiano dal Pozzo, who commissioned the Sacrament series, was secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, and is often referred to as the father of modern archaeology.

Cassiano immersed himself in the study of natural sciences and the philosophy, customs, and monuments of antiquity, to which end he amassed a "Paper Museum," an encyclopedic collection of drawings and prints that recorded the material evidence of the life and works of the ancients. He met Poussin soon after the artist's arrival in Rome from France, in 1624, and became one of his most important patrons. Eventually he owned (along with his brother) some 50 Poussin paintings. Cassiano's learned interests undoubtedly inspired the unprecedented subject of the sacraments as individual scenes—a theme that explored the core rites of Christian life leading to salvation. Poussin created narratives with an extraordinary attention to historical accuracy, bringing to life rituals of the early Christians and infusing each picture with a profound yet powerful pictorial structure.

Cassiano's Sacraments were admired by scores of artists and connoisseurs, including Paul Fréart de Chantelou, for whom Poussin created a second set of Sacraments between 1644 and 1648; these paintings are currently in the collection of the Duke of Sutherland, on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. To illustrate the sacrament of ordination—the taking of Holy Orders to become a priest, deacon, or bishop—Poussin depicted the gospel account of Christ giving the keys of heaven and earth to the kneeling apostle Peter, showing the authority vested in him as head of the Roman church: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 16:18–19). Poussin charges his magisterial composition with the varied emotional reactions and gestures of each apostle, setting the figures against an airy landscape. Probably among the earliest completed in the series, the painting is in excellent condition.

Sir Robert Walpole, the early 18th-century British prime minister whose extensive art collection was later acquired by Catherine the Great of Russia and would become the nucleus of the Hermitage Museum, attempted to acquire Poussin's Sacraments from the heirs of Cassiano dal Pozzo, but the pope at that time, Benedict XIV, considered them too important to the cultural patrimony of Rome to leave the city and stopped their export. It was in 1785 that James Byres, agent in Rome of Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland, finally succeeded in securing the series, which the Duke had some years earlier expressed a desire to purchase. The Duke consulted Sir Joshua Reynolds, who enthusiastically endorsed the purchase as "a great object of art...perhaps a greater than any we have at present in this nation.

Poussin certainly ranks amongst the first of the first rank of Painters, and to have a set of Pictures of such an artist will really and truly enrich the nation." When the paintings arrived in London, Reynolds attended to the cleaning of the paintings and arranged for them to be exhibited with great fanfare at the Royal Academy in 1787 before their installation at the Duke of Rutland's Belvoir Castle, in new frames—ordered by Reynolds himself—which remain on the paintings to this day. The Dal Pozzo Sacraments were on display at Belvoir Castle for over 200 years and from 2003 until 2010 on loan to the National Gallery, London. Of the original seven works, the Duke of Rutland retains Confirmation, Eucharist, Extreme Unction, and Marriage. Penance was destroyed in a fire, and Baptism was acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1946. The Sacrament of Ordination was offered for sale by the trustees of the Belvoir Estate, and the proceeds will support the renovation and long-term preservation of Belvoir Castle and Estate.

The Kimbell Art Foundation was represented in the negotiation of the painting's purchase by Robert Holden Ltd. and Sotheby's. The Kimbell secured an export license in August of 2011. In documents made public, the expert advisor for the British Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest wrote, "Poussin's depictions of these sacred ceremonies represent one of the supreme artistic, intellectual and spiritual achievements in Western art and thought." Nicolas Poussin Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) occupies a central place in the history of art. Born in France, he spent most of his career in Rome. Esteemed as both a painter-poet and painter-philosopher, Poussin was an artist whose work encompassed the full range of human expression, imaginative, and intellectual. He attracted a number of important patrons, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who recalled him to France as First Painter in Ordinary to the King, though the artist soon chose to return to Rome. He was admired by Bernini as an incomparable storyteller.

Poussin's works range from youthful mythological paintings and sensuous bacchanals to austerely rigorous history paintings and devotional works, from bucolic pastoral landscapes to the epic, pantheistic landscapes of his old age. His paintings provided the foundation for the great French tradition of classical art, in turn nurturing the neoclassicism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Generations of artists, from David to Delacroix to Cézanne and beyond, have drawn inspiration and measured their own achievements in relation to the towering art of Poussin. Prints After Poussin (Getty Research Institute) View Full Record Prints after Poussin is a pilot project for the Getty Research Institute digital library program that will provide online access to works of art-historical interest. This small, searchable collection of images was drawn from the special collections holdings of reproductive prints in the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. The prints that are reproduced on this Web site comprise 35 etchings and engravings after the works of Nicolas Poussin (15941665).

The engravers include Gérard Audran (16401703), Étienne Baudet (ca. 16361711), Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella (16361697), François de Poilly (16221693), and Poussin's brother-in-law Jean Dughet (16141679). This site includes a representative range of Poussin's religious and classical subjects: a complete Seven Sacraments (the first set), the lost Sacrifice of Noah, the early Adoration of the Magi and Entombment of Christ, and the late Christ and the Adulteress. A particularly impressive moment in the history of reproductive engraving is represented by Baudet's tour de force rehearsal of the Landscape with funeral of Phocion and The ashes of Phocion collected by his widow. Banner image: Rinaldo and Armida (detail), Gérard Audran (French, 1640–1703), after Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665), ca.

1684–90, engraving. The Getty Research Institute, 2001.PR.3

Question: What was the first name of the French artist Poussin (1594-1665)?
Answer: Nicolas